Jun 19, 2008

"Sometimes these things just happen in life"

That would be Mia trying to console a screaming Sam while my mom and I were attempting to remove an infected sliver (actually more like a small tree branch) from his foot yesterday morning. Let's just say he was less than appreciative of her elderly wisdom. I, on the other hand, found it quite amusing. Though I wasn't the one with a piece of lumber in my foot.

So my parents left for California later that day, and as I driving home from the airport and listening to Nate coughing (he had come down with a cold the day before), I thought, "watch, my mom and dad leave and I'll probably end up in the ER with the baby tonight."

Fast forward to me sitting in the ER with Nate around midnight, after he suddenly spiked what we thought was a bad fever. Like I've said before on this blog, we like our Emergency Room visits to be slightly embarrassing and pointless, and true to form, by the time we got there, his fever had come down, his coughing fits had disappeared, and he was actually quite content and healthy looking. And luckily his temperature of 100.1 was just shy of the 100.3 threshold that is considered dangerous for infants and warrants a whole battery of tests and procedures. We got off with a simple chest x-ray which came back clear. So besides feeling a little sheepish (but what else to you do in the middle of the night when your 2 1/2 week old has a fever and is coughing and generally acting miserable?) and sleep deprived, we were discharged around 3 AM. (And can I just say here that TV has done me wrong. I spent almost 3 hours in that ER, and nothing even remotely exciting or dramatic happened. The doctor looked nothing like John Stamos or Patrick Dempsey, I didn't have any deep and enlightening conversations with anyone where my situation paralleled their own interpersonal conflicts, and as far as I could tell, none of the doctors and nurses were involved with each other. I mean, come on!)

So, that's how I got to start my first day back to real life with 3 kids: an ER visit and a sick baby. All in all, we survived though, thanks to the electronic babysitter and Costco chicken nuggets. As Mia would say, "sometimes these things just happen in life."

Here is a picture of Mia and Sam today in their pajamas (it was 1 PM), when I found them outside "decorating" their new pet rocks with glue and leaves. This is what happens when you turn off the TV for an hour.

Yesterday at 9PM Suzy was going to the grocery store and she asked me to try to fold some of the clothes on the couch while I watched TV. Not an unreasonable request, but yesterday I was on empty. I honestly don't know how my wife does everything she does.I realized yesterday though that once that baby comes we are going to go into damage control mode for a few weeks/months.Some days you can clean up the same mess 5 times without a thought. Other days cereal & PBS are a victory.